Why did Kodachrome fail in the end?

[twelvetone12]

Actually Film Ferrania plans to produce any type of film; they are starting with E6 because it was the last film produced in the plant before closing and because it is the least represented in the market now.

 

[kb3lms]

True enough.

About FF, I sincerely wish them success and hope that they do produce any sort of film that they can. Ferrania products were not the most technically advanced but not bad either. I still have some Solaris in the freezer. It's a perfectly usable film. And the last Ferrania E6 product I used, and I have to admit that was way back in college in the K-Mart days (remember the FOCAL brand?), was a decent enough product. Shot a lot of vacation slides on it and they were just fine.

It seems to me that FF could have a real winner if they could tune the palette of their film to something that resembled Kodachrome.

 

[Ian Grant]

On a UK Forum Martin Reed the founder and former owner of Silverprint (once the UK's leading darkroom supply shop/business) has posted tri-colour images he's made with Foma film. (He's now the UK importer/distributor for Foma).

Now he doesn't claim much and is using digital scans to recombine and is only playing casually but we have to remember that before and just after WWII Tri-colour images were being made regularly with specialist cameras and the results were remarkably good. People are still making Dye-matrix prints and other old colour processes like tri Carbo are still in use.

It's worth getting hold of an early copy of D A Spencer's book Colour Photography in Practice, it was a companion to L P Clerc's Photography, Theory and Practice. Because photography changed quite quickly early copies of both books contain quite a bit later left out as processes progressed. D A Spencer was a Director of Kodak and new the early colour processes well which makes the book a very interesting read. Particularly apt are the quotes used at the start of each chapter from Charles Dodgson's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, (better know as Lwis Carrol).

The point being colour photography existed before Kodachrome.

Ian

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, I've personally assembled the necessary supplies and built the relevant equipment to do dye transfer printing, and have even worked out the accurate separation negative protocol. That will hopefully be a fun diversion after I retire and hypothetically have the time to do it.
But with the same time and dollar commitment I could make thousands of excellent color prints on a more modern medium in my own darkroom. Probably the most stunning images were never printed to begin with. They'd align three separate carbon-arc projectors, each with
a different color separation neg in it. The first and ultimate version of a color slide show. Just so it wasn't Aunt Maude's vacation pictures!

 

[Ian Grant]

There's survival and revival.

On Sunday I went to shoot Tornado an A1 class steam locomotive, the last one made by British Railways was built in 1960, all had been scrapped by 1966 when we switched totally to Diesel or Electric. However after a few years a new A1 steam locomotive was built privately and completed.

Polaroid ceased trading but we now have The Impossible Project. Forte and EFKE ceased trading,Agfa left the consumer market (Amateur & Professional) but we still have some materials coated by Innovision and Adox/Fotoimpex is reviving a Tellko/Ciba-Geigy/Ilford Marly coating line.

I wouldn't under estimate Ferrania's capabilities, their products under 3M ownership were poorly marketed under their own brand names, their colour films were excellent but nearly always sod as own label by 3rd parties. I remember a 3M rep giving me a load of film and paper probably early 1980's and the prints wee excellent, but no-one sold the products . . . . . .

Ian

 

[DREW WILEY]

Oh gosh. I did buy and use a bit of that film for a special look now and then, but trying to compare that to what the big three offered in E6
chrome film even back then, that's a stretch. Kodachrome is almost its own topic. Don't get me wrong - I'm rooting for Ferrania too, but again, for niche usage, esp in 120 film. What I really want is someone marketing 8x10 Kodachrome on polyester base with a retail price of
ten dollars a box, along with a discount coupon for forty-inch rolls of Cibachrome at a hundred dollars a roll. Of course, that's about as probable as meeting both Elvis and Bigfoot on the same UFO at the same time.

 

[wiltw]

Kodak 'sold off' its processing in 1988 to Qualex under a joint venture between Kodak and Fuqua Industries, and the Qualex orientation on money rather than on quality started to drive off many loyal Kodakchrome shooters after lots of reports of poorly handled film processing. Kodak had already been closing some of its lab locations, such as the closure of Palo Alto plant in 1992, and eventually even closed the Findlay OH lab which it took over once again from Qualex, its joint venture partner.
New Lab in SF, having a sterling reputation in E-6 processing, started its own Kodachrome process in the late 1980's using European equipment which was simpler and different from Kodak's own process; it was one of about a half dozen labs not directely affiliated with Kodak who handled Kodachrome. But New Lab stopped in 1992, stating enviromental issues. Velvia's rise in popularity in the 1990's affected Kodachrome sales.

 

[Xmas]

For Fujichrome to survive that trend needs to increase.

Ian

Hi Ian

Don't forget to hang up your stocking Christmas Eve.

Noel

 

[DREW WILEY]

That sell off of the processing is exactly what took me off the path of using Kodachrome, not the film itself. The quality control went downhill.

 

[Ian Grant]

Hi Ian

Don't forget to hang up your stocking Christmas Eve.

Noel

The dog would like Dalmationchrome, brown and white as he's a liver spot He'll have to make do with prints on Ilford Warmtone and ID-78 (very similar to Warmtone developer) and selenium toning.

Ian

 

[Photo Engineer]

Fred, how about the money spent on all of those failed ventures such as the 10 Meg Floppy, and buying Wang computer when it failed!

They could have saved money instead of spending it like it was water. And they could have worked to become a digital camera and printer company. After all, at that time, they owned most of the best sensor patents.

I watched as digital grew and yet they spent more and more on film including the MAC center and the high speed wide coaters. These were all driven by mgrs who could do no wrong.

PE

 

[Sirius Glass]

Kodak 'sold off' its processing in 1988 to Quayle under a joint venture between Kodak and Fuqua Industries, and the Qualex orientation on money rather than on quality started to drive off many loyal Kodakchrome shooters after lots of reports of poorly handled film processing. Kodak had already been closing some of its lab locations, such as the closure of Palo Alto plant in 1992, and eventually even closed the Findlay OH lab which it took over once again from Qualex, its joint venture partner.
New Lab in SF, having a sterling reputation in E-6 processing, started its own Kodachrome process in the late 1980's using European equipment which was simpler and different from Kodak's own process; it was one of about a half dozen labs not directely affiliated with Kodak who handled Kodachrome. But New Lab stopped in 1992, stating enviromental issues. Velvia's rise in popularity in the 1990's affected Kodachrome sales.

Through Costco Qualex lost several of my rolls of film. I convinced Costco end the relation with Qualex. Helping Qualex ouyt of business is one of the better things that I have done.

 

[accozzaglia]

This was very informative. Thank you.

Kodak 'sold off' its processing in 1988 to Qualex under a joint venture between Kodak and Fuqua Industries, and the Qualex orientation on money rather than on quality started to drive off many loyal Kodakchrome shooters after lots of reports of poorly handled film processing. Kodak had already been closing some of its lab locations, such as the closure of Palo Alto plant in 1992, and eventually even closed the Findlay OH lab which it took over once again from Qualex, its joint venture partner.
New Lab in SF, having a sterling reputation in E-6 processing, started its own Kodachrome process in the late 1980's using European equipment which was simpler and different from Kodak's own process; it was one of about a half dozen labs not directely affiliated with Kodak who handled Kodachrome. But New Lab stopped in 1992, stating enviromental issues. Velvia's rise in popularity in the 1990's affected Kodachrome sales.

 

[AgX]

For each new film photographer or cinematographer who listened to their mentors (those who steered them over to other films before even learning about what was so special about Kodachrome as a medium with its own palette and rendering capabilities), it meant that with each turnover of a generation, photographers and consumers more broadly heard less and less about this particular Kodak product family (and arguably about other Kodak product lines, as well).

To be fair:
Kodachrome had a different standing in other parts of the world.

 

[Xmas]

Kodaks production coater could only economically make more Kodachrome than we were using in 18months...

If they could make more profit making a different film that is the capitalist way.

They needed to pay the production staff wages.

 

[accozzaglia]

To be fair:
Kodachrome had a different standing in other parts of the world.

I'm sure of it.

I'm not sure where/if data still exist on Kodak's annual market share for still films globally, broken down by region/nation, and broken down within nation-states versus its chief competitors. I imagine the highest sales yields corresponded to locations where Kodak opened their biggest processing labs, but from a motivation of research, it would be interesting to see how those sales share numbers were broken down by region and over time.

 

[accozzaglia]

Kodaks production coater could only economically make more Kodachrome than we were using in 18months...

Which returns to the company's failure (or a refusal, leading up to its failure) to learn to incorporate the common industrial practice of scalability to adjust to changing market demands. Whether scalability amounted to just-in-time production, which is more suited to unit-based manufacturing, or to design in scalability in successor coating machines which could be re-tooled quickly to yield different-sized master rolls as consumer demand warranted, the possibilities were there — if the executive wanted it. Companies which can do this adeptly can adapt in ways which those ill-able to simply cannot. Companies solely focussed on "forever up and bigger" will eventually undermine itself, because everything — including market potential — is only so big.

If they could make more profit making a different film that is the capitalist way.

Not quite. The capitalist way is profit. More profit is a nice-to-have, not an essential. In capitalism, profit (contrast with loss) is what's essential. Profit is nevertheless profit, even when that profit is proportionately the same, but overall output is smaller.

Put another way, if the only way a corporation can live within its means ("live", because [soylent] corporations are people, right?) is by constantly scaling up and up to outright un-sustainability, then the corporation will eventually find itself with a voracious diet it cannot sustain, and it will starve itself to its own death.

Kodak could have continued to reach profitability, albeit at smaller proportions. In order to do so and to sustain that, however, they would have needed to emphasize an internal policy of scalability in all aspects of practice: procurement, manufacture, wholesale, distribution, and marketing. Even with a smaller profit share from a smaller, fitter company, this profit would still be available for reinvestment to continue research & development to deliver the bread and butter products (which made up the bedrock of its brand) at smaller scales — and do so without sacrificing the entire kit and caboodle of the corporation or the brand.

They needed to pay the production staff wages.

Yes, they did. Kodak also needed to live with its means when those means changed. Kodak needed to take the lead on digital imaging rather than be a dilettante to its own innovation. Ceding its talent brain trust to smaller competitors (which came in during the '90s and '00s and snapped up that talent) is akin to lobbing off limbs as a way to lose weight. Kodak bled out.

 

[EdSawyer]

well, no. That couldn't be *more* wrong. Of any company doing stuff today, Apple would be the last to fall or fail. They are still on the upswing, have not even close to peaked, really. Their innovation continues on so many levels, which most dilletantes and wall-street pundits are unaware of. They are like what a modern-day Kodak would be, or what Kodak was in it's heyday: successful and continuing to do meaningful R&D. Everyone else is basically just copying Apple (and doing so poorly, for the most part.)

The demise of other large companies will happen FAR sooner than anything negative from Apple. Things like farcebook, google, and most of the website-based companies (e.g. the latest unicorn/bubble stuff from silicon valley) are the ones that should be worrying about their (non-existent) future.

Apple have already hit their apex. They'll continue to be around for a long time to come, but their age of driving innovation and doing so nimbly (the very essence of what kept them alive, where other tech hardware companies from their class cohort of the 1970s failed) is of their past.

 

[railwayman3]

Kodaks production coater could only economically make more Kodachrome than we were using in 18months...

The large size and scale of Kodak's coating machines and facilities generally have been continually put forward as a reason for discontinuing products.

I have a glossy Kodak catalogue from 1972 of scientific products, which includes dozens of the most obscure special films, papers and even glass plates, for every possible scientific purpose, together with offers of coating for particular research purposes. Clearly these products must have been produced in tiny quantities even then, so small or micro-size production facilities must have been available. And presumably Kodak would not manufacture these at a loss ?

 

[DREW WILEY]

Never say never. Polaroid was invincible for the previous generation, so was Kodak. I've seen plenty of 75-year old corporations still in high gear drop like flies due to a single bad decision. Tech companies aren't immune. Just depends on who is running the show at a given point in
time.

 

[accozzaglia]

Given that this is off-topic from Kodachrome, I'll try keep this on point with relating it back to Kodak.

I've used Apple products constantly since 1980, back when I was in grade two. I'm using a unibody MBP to type this (itself the seventh Apple laptop I've owned over the years). I still use a key lime clamshell iBook as a sandbox and a G5 tower as a media file server. I still use a 4G iPod nano because it's compact, durable, and works very well. I deliberately do not own an iPhone, iPad, iPhone-based iPod, or Watch, for which there is a good reason I'll describe.

Apple's innovation came from taking what already existed and imagining a better way to make both the functionality and form better. Some of the innovation was derivative (as Xerox's PARC would remind us), but its implementation was novel and it ultimately was what helped it weather the tech shakedown which brought down Commodore, Atari, and other long forgotten names. Once Apple lost its way from that mission during the Sculley years, Apple flagged and nearly tanked. It required bring back the chief innovator to re-imagine the company into what steered it toward the force it became in the '00s. To do so, getting Apple away from peripherals like Laserwriters and more leanly-oriented on developing excellent, durable, and novel computing hardware, coupled with a modern OS which truly allowed multithreading and multitasking, was imperative.

Again, by licensing specific technologies and using them in new ways — implementations like OEM wifi, Darwin/BSD-based OS X, and Firewire data transfer (which, while Apple started that ball rolling in '86, needed an IEEE consortium of others tech companies like TI to bring it to fruition and to make it a non-proprietary standard) — Apple continued on its spirit of innovation. Apple joined with IBM and Motorola to develop Power chip architecture to deliver computing performances which outstripped competitors on AMD and Intel chips.

(And before you go, "yes, but PowerPC ended up being slow and hungry," remember how it was this architecture which not only blew away its Intel/AMD-based competitors for several years, especially with respect to graphics-intensive processing, but also remains the computing foundation on which all Intel-based growth of Apple products since 2006 have sprung. Without PowerPC chips, OS X would never have had a branding leg to stand on, pre-2005, if from the get-go it tried to use the same chip architecture as their Windows-based competitors. Before Apple could switch over, Intel had to catch up to win over Apple.)

But then, Apple's innovation model flagged. Apple flipped the playing field.

Since then, and especially after about 2007 (accelerated after 2011), Apple's press for innovation has languished — not least which because it hasn't been devising or implementing innovative, useful technologies so much as it began to do three other things. One, Apple swallows up would-be, start-up innovators and quashes the very path to competitiveness which Apple itself profited from during the late '70s and early '80s (i.e., a "bully complex"); Two, it started to develop much of its hardware as consumer appliances for monetizing the innovations of others not part of the Apple umbrella, through monopolistic licensing arrangements which centrally distribute non-Apple software in the form of "apps" via iTunes/Apple store. It's a complete snub toward the innovative spirit of the open-source software community from which Apple leaned on heavily to develop the core software on which every Mac and Apple portable device is now based. And three, Apple entered into several macro-scale partnerships with entertainment companies — whose own partners have their own legacy systems of vertical integration and oligopolization which they want to protect from evolutionary change — thus, a way to further isolate and control the means of distribution of content which Apple itself has had no role in helping to generate or innovate.

While this may allow Apple to rake in a lot of money for now, it's not sustainable. Eventually, others will find a better way to do what they're doing, do it for far cheaper, and ideally in a way which forces the field to be more open than it is. Whereas Apple was once lifted by scrappy innovators, it — as with a lot of Silicon Valley now — is now driven hard by MBAs who a generation ago were pretty much everywhere else but Silicon Valley, devising innovative things like hedge funds and derivatives markets.

Apple may be having its Kodak golden-age moment now, because Apple today is principally invested in maintaining its bigness through the monopolization of vertical integration in its physical products and licensed virtual products (apps), intimidating would-be competitors long before they become viable as competitors.

To maintain their grip (for now), Apple must do so by feeding from the brain trusts of others who not only are not under their employ, but also (whether individually or collectively) wield little leverage beyond playing within Apple's rules and within Apple's compulsory house. This brain trust is also made from the next generation of developers and innovators, but who — unlike the Jobs and Wozniaks of the '70s — find themselves locked within a constrictive ecosystem as a near-compulsory precondition to participate. There is no assurance of company/brand loyalty that this brain trust will continue go along with Apple's constraining licensing rules in perpetuity. This constrictive ecosystem also stifles innovation. It's parasitic, even sociopathic.

And frankly, there's very little I've seen which has been truly innovative coming from Apple in quite a long time. The Watch, iPad, and current iPod are all derivatives of the iPhone (and the iPhone was derivative of the tech and industrial design which was already going into their laptops). Portable computing hardware is all derivative from the 2008-era unibody architecture —itself a minor bump forward from the aluminium/titanium compact form factor and durability innovated back in 2001. OS X has declined proportionately as more iOS-related functionality gets injected into its source code as way to further monopolize software distribution. And if anything, the Xserve replacement around 2013 is more a snub at the rack-mounted enterprise server form factor than anything truly innovative. And never mind the flop that's been the new MacBook, now equipped with even less interoperability and extensibility than its predecessor.

So, yeah. Enjoy it while it lasts.

well, no. That couldn't be *more* wrong. Of any company doing stuff today, Apple would be the last to fall or fail. They are still on the upswing, have not even close to peaked, really. Their innovation continues on so many levels, which most dilletantes and wall-street pundits are unaware of. They are like what a modern-day Kodak would be, or what Kodak was in it's heyday: successful and continuing to do meaningful R&D. Everyone else is basically just copying Apple (and doing so poorly, for the most part.)

The demise of other large companies will happen FAR sooner than anything negative from Apple. Things like farcebook, google, and most of the website-based companies (e.g. the latest unicorn/bubble stuff from silicon valley) are the ones that should be worrying about their (non-existent) future.

 

[DREW WILEY]

With consumer electronics, you're always only one model away from getting upstaged. Apple is all about marketing, having the coolest new thing on the block. Exactly what I don't give a damn about. I like reliability, and hence did buy a Mac back when other products were being plagued with viruses. Otherwise, let's just say I prefer a landline phone to a cellular one, prefer all mechanical cameras to anything with
bells n' whistles, and don't even own a digital camera. Some of my gear is fifty years old and still utterly precise, and will probably last a
hundred years more in good hands. Most cool electronic stuff is designed to be obsolete as soon as something cooler hits the market six
month later, and if not, a change in software will doom it in a year or two. If you can sprint ahead of the pack, you're still in business. If
someone happens to be significant faster, too late. Long-term business models are more the turf of Oracle, who designs the common
software protocols needed by all of them. Investors in general really aren't terribly bright. I'm smack in the middle of techie geography,
and have seen billionaires today become cab drivers tomorrow. Real billionaires don't even tip the Cabbie or pay the fare. You can always spot them because they're such skinflints and haggle everything. And rich folk often overextend either their corporate or personal debt,
no matter how much money they seem to have. I've seen some big corporations go down quick that way too. Human nature. Greed.